DANIEL BEAUREGARD / WARMTH

“Anyway you look at it’s a helluva circle,” he said about the moon. The wind blew like an empty tunnel as we climbed. There was shale everywhere but no owls. Our boots were made from snakes from Texas.

“Suzy fucked a lumberjack and then I was born,” he said with a snort. “Oh yeah?”“Yeahhhh.”“Well, what kinda horse was it?” “A lumberjack.”

He stumbled.

The air up here, you could eat it. You could sell it like ice. Last year a fire burned the woods down. It reached all the way to the top of the mountain. Just looks like charred nubs now, dangerous.

“You can see your breath when you whistle,” I shouted.

The closer we got to the top, the more the moon made us watch. We ate the horses. They weren’t ours but we ate ’em anyway, even kept the hooves for luck. We used to be dependents but now we live like free like this burnt forest. We look dangerous I bet.

“Hey, you think we look dangerous?” I shouted. “You bet.”

I started feeling real heavy and sat down. I spit on a tumbleweed and watched him sit down too. This shale is useless. You can’t eat it. It’s brittle and it cracks. But you can sharpen knives on it. I got knives. We both do. I had mine for a long time and he just got his.

“Hey, you always come up short.” “What?” he shouted against the wind. “You always come up short,’” I screamed. “You’re short.”

The sky was beginning to glow again. I stood and looked at it. He nudged me. I nodded, sat back down.

Nubs know no menace.

2.

The sun always wakes us when it’s hot. We sleep outside now. Take our clothes off when it’s time to get up. Pull the skin off each other’s backs while we walk. A home means you’re never hungry. Horse hooves aren’t lucky but they’ll make a nice ashtray.

“Sometimes I can eat raw meat and other times it makes me puke?” I said. “Because sometimes you have to cook your meat.”

Wake up each morning pretending I’m something new. He does it too. We pretend we’re lizards on the sand, shed our skin. We eat insects. Big brother said we give thanks for the things we named and this is the way it should be in our minds.

It’s winter but hasn’t snowed in years. Once I thought I saw snow but they told me it was only ash.

Soon we’ll have to find new furs.

“Tell me why we’re here,” I said. “Tell me where we’ve been and where we’re going.”“Sit down then.”

He squinted out the sunlight.I smoothed my furs onto the shale and lay down, turning into jerky.

Before beginning he blew the snot out of his nose then began:

“In the beginning there was one star in a pot of darkness. As time passed, the pot began to boil. One day, the pot became full, and the star exploded into everything. That is why we burn but never catch fire. We’re part of everything.” “Is everything?”“Yes.”“Then how come the trees burn?” “I’m not sure.”“Were we made first?”“No, we were made long after.”

3.

I watched him piss in a waterfall then I did. We stuck the knife between our teeth and went. Things were different. In the water the fish shine like tin cans and I can hold my breath for hours. The fish down here are all different shapes and sizes. We catch the ones that glow in the sun like so much gasoline. We eat ’em raw.

Big brother says back in time people could become animals. Animals could become people. Spoke the same language. Words like magic. All you had to do was say.

He caught one. We used the shale to scrape the scales off. Ate it raw. Left a cairn of tiny bones on a rock as evidence and started walking. We put our footprints down. They leave marks no one can read.

Now our hair is no longer wet.

“Do we live in a crazy place or inside our mind?” “Both I think.”

On top of this mountain is another mountain and another one on top of that. But the wolves won’t eat us. The buzzards won’t pick our bones. We are them. They are us. One day the sun will take us back. But now the mountains are much too small. Crow brings us his messages from above and that is the way things are. No longer can we glide upon the wind yet our blood burns with it. Our bones were once made of gold.

The night that father died the man with the iron face came to our home. He said he had something important for my father and placed a calfskin package on the table. Then it began to rain.

6.

What now becomes the cold big brother?What now becomes us? What flows inside our bones? What marrow is ours? Is it fat? Will it burn?Tell me again where the sun takes us when we die? Tell me again of the place we were before.Tell me again of father, of mother, of our land whence green. Who shall we pray to now?Who should we call to fill our mouths with dust? Who makes the dust of men?Where is the sun leading us? Where is the sun leading us?Where is the sun leading us? Where is the sun leading us? Where is the sun leading us? Squint. Squint harder.Close your eyes.Squint again. Close your eyes.Eat your dead.

Daniel Beauregard lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His work has appeared in a number of places including sleepingfish, The Fanzine, smoking glue gun, Poor Claudia, ILK, Jellyfish and elsewhere. He has previously published two chapbooks of poetry, HELLO MY MEAT and Before You Were Born. He’s also a co-founder of OOMPH! Press, a small press devoted to the publication of poetry and prose in translation. He's currently working on a novel titled Lord of Chaos and can be reached on Instagram @666ICECREAM.